BS·2

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Inscription
Reading in transliteration:	dieupala / minui
Reading in original script:
Object:	BS·2 Sabbio Chiese (slab)
Position:	front
Orientation:	0°
Direction of writing:	dextroverse
Script:	Latin script
Number of letters:	13
Number of lines:	2
Workmanship:	carved
Condition:	complete
Archaeological culture:	Late Republican, Augustan [from object]
Date of inscription:	mid-1st c. BC–early 1st c. AD [from object]
Type:	funerary
Language:	unknown
Meaning:	'Dieupala (daughter) of Minuos' (?)
Alternative sigla:	Whatmough 1933 (PID): note xii b Morandi 2004: 232
Sources:	Morandi 2004: 669 f.

Commentary

First published in Pietro Gnocchi, Le antiche iscrizioni bresciane nuovamente riscontrate, e corrette con l'aggiunta di non poche fin'ora inedite (ca. 1753), 252.

Image in Imagines Italiae X.5: no. 1119, p. 566 (photo = EDR091119).

Inscribed in two centred lines on one side of the slab; the Latin letters are executed very neatly and with serifs.

After Mommsen in CIL V 4897 had suspected the text to be "Raetica magis quam Latina", the inscription was brought into the sphere of Cisalpine Celtic by Rhŷs 1913: 71 f., who compared minui with TI·42 minuku and pala with Lepontic pala on the Lugano stelae. Rhŷs originally interpreted dieu as a prefixed word comparable to Lat. diū 'for a long time' ('long-term grave of Minuos'), but changed his mind after a correspondence with Gustav Herbig (1913). According to Rhŷs 1914: 30–32, Herbig suggested to read the lower line first (cf. GR·1 and VB·26 as per Danielsson) and to interpret dieu as a patronym: 'grave for Minos Dieos' (also Lattes 1914: 920 f.).

Kretschmer 1943: 192–194 went back to analysing dieupala as a compound, but interpreted dieu- as the word for 'Zeus', comparing Oscan monuments with diuvila, iúvila (Untermann 2000: 188): 'Iovis-stone of/for Minos' (also Pisani 1964: 330, no. 140, Tibiletti Bruno 1973: 156 f., Pisani 1977: 345). Tibiletti Bruno 1973: 157, n. 29 compares dieu as read by Prosdocimi 1965: 597 f. in a Camunic rock inscription at Capo di Ponte (also Morandi 2001b: 62).

In both Herbig's and Kretschmer's interpretations, the inscription has two features associated with Lepontic: the lexeme pala, and the dative ending -ūi̯. Both are, however, uncertain. minui may, as originally assumed by Rhŷs, be a gentive in -ī of a u-stem rather than a dative in -ūi̯ of an o-stem. Whatmough PID: 59 notes that the comparison of pala with Lep. pala presumes that the latter has initial /p/ rather than /b/, and that the attestation would be far removed from the other pala-monuments geographically and typologically. For late(ish) attestations of -ūi̯ cf. VB·3.1 and NO·18, and the highly dubious PD·2 brogdui.

dieupala was classified as a feminine personal name already in TLL Onom. III.2: 150.33 s.v. [1914–1925] ("nom. barb.?"). Untermann 1959: 131 also preferred to see a name formed with -alo-, followed by a genitival patronym minui (also Tibiletti Bruno 1973: 157, Pellegrini 1983: 35 f.). An analysis as a Venetic dithematic name is proposed by Prósper 2024: 18–21, who allows for the possibility that the patronym minui is Celtic. See further on the word pages.

In summary, the interpretation as a name formula is the most straight-forward solution. The grammar of the text with a patronymic genitive in -ī is too generic to ascribe to a particular IE language, though the formation is arguably most typically Celtic. At a stretch, we could consider that both dieupala and minui are individual names, the latter in the Lepontic/archaic dative: 'Dieupala (set up the stone uel sim.) for Minos'. In either case, we seem to have an alphabetically and stylistically Latin inscription with vernacular grammar, featuring personal names which are etymologically derived from different vernacular languages.

See also Albertini 1973: 106, fig. 5, Tibiletti Bruno 1978b: 16 f., Guido Migliorati, Acculturazione nell'epigrafia di Brescia romana? In Mainardis, F. (ed.), Voce concordi. Scritti per Claudio Zaccaria, Trieste 2016, 505–518.

Bibliography

Albertini 1973	Alberto Albertini, Brixiana. Note di Storia ed Epigrafia, Brescia: Ateneo 1973.
CIL	Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. (17 volumes, various supplements)